September, what a beauty you have been. Misty, dewy mornings, days of bright sunshine, clear-skied evenings, with drifting bonfire smoke. Sloes, apples, blackberries, elderberries and plums: the bounty of the trees and of the hedgerows. Bunches of bright dahlias, skeletal brown seed heads, rich loam from the garden. The mystery of the pine forest, the

In a moment of perfect pathetic fallacy, the rain is streaming down the kitchen windows as I write this, on the last day of August and the final day of the summer holidays. I always find it difficult to let August go, and although I tend to claim that the first days of September are still

Wonderful July, month of jewel-bright promise. This month has brought so many delights. A visit to a wonderful garden and a trip to a lavender farm. Jars of jam and batches of scones. Mornings at the market and baskets of flowers. Flowers everywhere, in fact. Growing along the verges, plucked from the garden, foraged from

June, lovely June. I feel as if I have failed to savour June’s precious moments, and yet, when I look back, there are many that I captured…. After-school strawberry picking and the first batch of jam, endless elderflower gathering for litres of cordial. Walks in the meadow, posies from the garden. A perfect bouquet of home-grown